Woodside Energy has laid a solid foundation for the second half of 2019, recording strong financial and production results for the first six months of the year.
The company reported a half year net profit after tax of $419 million, down from $541 million in the corresponding period last year, while producing 39 million barrels of oil equivalent and operating revenue of $2.26 billion.
Woodside backed these results by completing the first major turnaround at Pluto LNG since operations started in 2012.
“The strong cash flow generated by Pluto LNG will contribute significantly to the delivery of Woodside’s vision for the Burrup Hub, which will unlock the future value of our world-class processing facilities in Karratha,” Woodside chief executive officer Peter Coleman said.
Coleman also attributed the company’s half year results to Woodside’s other base businesses, with the North West Shelf and Wheatstone operations recording “solid production.”
This was helped by improvements being implemented to increase the efficiency and production capacity of LNG trains four and five at the North West Shelf.
Woodside also expects to receive a production boost from the restart of the Vincent wells, part of its Greater Enfield oil project off the northwest coast of Western Australia, and the expectation of first oil from the Greater Enfield reservoirs in August 2019.
While the company sets up first the second half of the year, Coleman attributed the dip in profit to the “impact of Tropical Cyclone Veronica, the planned maintenance at Pluto LNG, and the Ngujima-Yin floating production storage and offloading facility being offline for refurbishment in Singapore ahead of its restart at Greater Enfield.”
Coleman also reported on the significant progress being made at the company’s major developments in Western Australia and Senegal over the course of the first half.
“The Scarborough joint venture has awarded two contracts related to the construction of the export gas pipeline,” he said.
“Commercial negotiation of a tolling agreement for the processing of Scarborough gas at Pluto Train 2 has progressed, as has engineering design for the upstream and downstream developments, in support of our targeted final investment decision in 2020.”